Bodies—Volume 2, Number 2—April 2014

It is very easy for history to untether and float away into abstractions; but it is far harder for it to do so when we remember that history, no matter what, happens to bodies. Not just our own, but those of others, and indeed of other species, bodies of water, planetary bodies. History itself is a body of knowledge. There’s abstraction here too, but it’s a useful abstraction. It suggests the connectedness of the body being considered: its ability to be born, live, and change.